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This article appeared in The Magazine of ������ University (November 2019)

Adjunct instructors give back to their alma mater

Alumni continue relationship with ������ by connecting with a new generation of students.

������, like most universities, engages adjunct instructors with specific expertise and knowledge to complement the work of full-time faculty. Most adjunct instructors teach one or two classes per semester while maintaining full-time careers in the public or private sector. For those adjunct instructors who are ������ alumni, returning to their alma mater is a way of continuing their relationship with the institution and carrying forward the traditions and values they were taught by the ������ Sisters and faculty.



Susan Dehn Matthews ’75, MAEA ’97 breaks new ground this fall in her role as a seasoned adjunct professor. She is teaching her first online course, Introduction to Roman Catholicism. Matthews is uniquely qualified for the course—in addition to being one of the first ���Ĺ��� students to graduate with a major in religious studies, she has served as a parish minister and certified pastoral associate and is the author of No Longer Silent: The Empowerment of Women in the Gospels (2011).

She also earned a master’s degree from the School of Education, walking across the stage at Commencement with her daughters in attendance. Her long association with ���Ĺ��� also includes taking her wedding photos on campus and cheering her mother, Bernardine Dehn ’77, who received her bachelor’s degree in religious studies from ���Ĺ��� two years after Susan.

Matthews recalls “a moment of clarity” during her sophomore year. “I realized that what I believed in and what I wanted to do in my life had to be one and the same,” she said. “I remember thinking that one day I wanted to teach here. Thirty-seven years later, I finally did it.

“I love the challenge of teaching, and making the course work expansive and inclusive. I tell my students to keep asking me questions—to keep challenging me,” Matthews explains. “That energy always keeps me going.”

Matthews acknowledges that ���Ĺ��� students today have a very different experience than she had. “So many are working full-time jobs,” she says, “but the commonality is a hunger to learn and to make a difference in the world.”

Like so many adjunct professors, Matthews continues to feed that same hunger she had as a student, while honoring, through her own teaching, the mentors she had decades ago.